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MANSFIELD — Ohio faith leaders are applauding the recent Supreme Court decision preserving the Bladensburg Peace Cross in Maryland by a convincing 7-2 margin.
One pastor who has a twenty-five foot cross at his church beside state highway believes this Supreme Court decision could help the judicial system to get back on the right track.
“I believe this recent decision is a victory for religious freedom in this country and will have a domino effect on other court decisions,” says Reverend Dink Porter of First Church of the Open Bible, located at 1150 Rayfield Road.
“I grew up as a kid in my church seeing this cross,” says Reverend Porter. “During our community outreaches, we have had motorists from out of the area compliment us for the cross display.”
In the Bladensburg Cross case, the majority ruled against the American Humanist Association and in favor of the 40-foot-tall World War I memorial erected on public land in 1919. The high court cited that the cross does not violate the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“Most Americans know to be true that religious displays on public lands do not violate the Constitution or represent an ‘establishment of religion,” said Aaron Baer, President of Citizens for Community Values in a press release.
“A government that roams the land, tearing down monuments with religious symbolism and scrubbing away any reference to the Divine will strike many as aggressively hostile to religion.”
supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito
Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion in the Bladensburg case, stated, “A government that roams the land, tearing down monuments with religious symbolism and scrubbing away any reference to the Divine will strike many as aggressively hostile to religion.”
“Radical activist groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) are on a crusade to threaten state and local leaders to abandon prayer and any other religious displays on government property,” says Baer.
“Our advice to Ohio leaders is that when FFRF calls, hang up the phone. Time and time again the courts have rejected their arguments. Their anti-religious worldview is not American. Clearly we can see that elections have consequences.”
Reverend Porter was one of 108 leading clergy in North Central Ohio to hold a press conference resisting federal judicial tyranny last year at the Richland County, Ohio Courthouse.
“I am dumbfounded that we have federal judges presently on the bench coming out of law schools that do not require them to study the U.S. Constitution,” commented Porter. “And these are the officials we have delegated the responsibility of interpreting our nation’s laws? It is my hope that this trend of conservative judicial nominations will bring justice and righteousness to our land as originally intended by the Founding Fathers.
“Isaiah 1:26 says ‘And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counselors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city.”
In a decision yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court also issued yet another religious freedom victory for cross memorials. The high court vacated a lower court ruling arguing a historic World War II-era cross in Bayview Park, Florida violates the separation of church and state, according to the Pensacola News Journal.
See the video below featuring historian David Barton describing the religious backgrounds of the framers of the Constitution. Last year Barton on his radio show commented: “I love the fact that the Ohio clergymen do a better job articulating the Constitution in their letter than most scholars and constitutional lawyers.”
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